ArmA 2: Dudes Make War, Not Love. Probably.

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One of RPS’ best chums has been working on iconoclastic soldier sequel ArmA 2 and he told us that stuff happens in it because of clever AI. Sounds amazing, we reckon. Obviously a trailer can’t get across the nuances of stuff happening because of AI, clever or otherwise, it just shows off helicopters and trees. There’s a story too, that our chum is helping write. It’s a love story between helicopters and trees whose parents do not approve. Sigh. Trailer!

My brother is a old OF fan, but can’t get around that new thing, for some reason I have his copy of ArmA. I have fond memories of playing the demo all the night a XMAX, with random people jumping on our game. We was playing like for 30 minutos killing stuff, and then BANG we discover that these people where humans joining our server. That was amazing. And we was behind a NAT router, so the netcode of ArmA has to be good.

I have to be one of the very few that will piss on Bohemia Interactives parade, mainly because their games are buggy, unfinished, sloppy pieces of work, that should have more budget invested in them. The realism aspect is something I could really get my teeth into, but their engines are just notoriously sloppy and rushed, buggy lumps of pixels thrown together for release… shame. Because like I said, This kind of realism is something I could really get into. Oh well.

I’m hoping that OpFlash 2 will be more or less bug free, because right now I’m not touching any of Bohemias games with a barge pole ’til they un-slopify their games (yes that is a word btw ¬_¬)

Arma really only needs “slight” improvements. The pathfinding and urban combat AI needs attention. BIS is saying both have been addressed, and the graphics are looking like they’ve been improved. Frankly a game like this does not live or die based on graphics.

The real story is the dynamic battlefield with a moving frontline and civilians. Crazy as this sounds I have a feeling Arma II is going to be the game that we were all expecting Far Cry 2 to be.

And it isn’t the graphics, it’s things like walking through walls in houses in urban areas. It’s sloppy, sluggish animations, it’s the radio commands that sound only marginally better than stephen hawkins.

Anyway as I was saying, I’m not sure this is what “we” expected from Far Cry 2. What I expected from Far Cry 2 was an open world shooter, not boot camp in DVD-ROM form.

I’ve never observed any walking through walls. Yeah there’s no ragdoll, but do we really need it? Arma was definitely bug ridden on release and not perfect by any stretch. But that doesn’t take away from its awesome.

A lot of people like me expected FC2 to have a dynamic world, with civilians etc. Like Stalker. But in Africa. Instead we got two or three missions we had to replay over and over in different parts of two large maps. An extreme disappointment.

Arma II promises a dynamic world that changes depending on your actions. The FC2 devs promised a dynamic campaign with a story that changes depending on your actions. Obviously at some point that got thrown out the window. Maybe just maybe BIS will deliver.

-i’ll be brief- loved ofp- loved far cry 2- want them to marry and have kid—–this game does not look like it but i suspect it will be much closer than ofp2 by codemasters…comeon the name says it all- hypermunchers

It looks just like I remember ArmA to be, to be honest. What killed ArmA for me (other than the unreliability I experienced) was the animations. You were slaved to the animation cycle. If, for instance, you’re kneeling with a rocket launcher, trying to ambush a convoy, and some infantry show up, you want to throw yourself on the ground. So you press the ‘stance down’ key. But the game then plays the ‘put away rocket launcher’ animation, then the ‘get out M-16’ animation, then the ‘lie down from crouch’ animation, then the ‘roll over dead’ animation because someone shot you in that time.

Or, if you kill a running man, he won’t fall over dead or show any sign of being hit until he gets to the end of his current ‘run forward two steps’ looping animation. This type of pause became really obtrusive.

Also I sucked royally at the game. But the TrackIR support was fantastic!

Actually, what’s interesting is that Bohemia seem to be implementing the mods that the community have made, such as a revive mechanism and suppression, into this game.

ArmA and OpFap were never realistic in the sense of graphical fidelity, but the first OpFap mission I ever played I was shitting myself the whole way through, going prone all the time and not even seeing the enemy beyond a few distant objects and lots of bullets zipping past.

Actually, how many games when OpFap was released had damage that killed or crippled after only a couple of hits? I can’t think of anything except perhaps Counterstrike. In that sense it was more realistic than anything on the market at the time.

Actually, how many games when OpFap was released had damage that killed or crippled after only a couple of hits? I can’t think of anything except perhaps Counterstrike. In that sense it was more realistic than anything on the market at the time.

I’ve always regarded that as a positive. ArmA didn’t pretend real soldiers can swap weapons and change stances in an instant.

Your rocket launcher example is pretty specific too. If you’re just running along carrying a rocket launcher then you can hit the deck very quickly. If you are in the process of aiming that rocket launcher then, yes it takes longer a bit longer (though even then there isn’t the automatic ‘get out M-16′ stage you refer too).

To be honest I wasn’t really impressed with this. I loved OFP and still play it regularly LANed with a mate who makes missions, campaigns etc.

The mods are what kept it alive. But in this day of GFX cards with 1GB of RAM (like mine :P) and multi cores the “wooden” animation that someone mentioned before look quite plain and horrible.

Granted this game will mostly rely on gameplay but it doesn’t look much better than the original Ghost Recon did from way back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.

I’m looking closely at this and OFP2 as I need something to fill the void that only OFP can. I haven’t decided which one that will be yet. More than likely it’ll be ArmA2 but OFP2 graphically looks far nicer from what I’ve seen.

About the radio commands, they could be done better, but the fact is that no one has ever done that type of radio commands better, ever. No one has even tried. If they recorded all of the lines possible in individual soundfiles you’d have gigs of them on your drive, and they would slow shit down BIGTIME. Thing is, they are just tiny bits of audio mashed together to form lines. You rightclick a vehicle and it plops a few bits together to form a line [Enemy][Truck][5’o clock] [50 meters]
That does get kinda stephen hawkingy, but hey, it works.

I agree about the engine and netcode being kinda shyte though. They really need to get some big buck backing and someone to help them with the engine and netcode. Cause they’ve proven time and again that they can’t do that properly..

Overall though, no game comes even close to the immersion that OFP and ARMA have delivered. In my opinion anyways. Just need to have patience with those games.. Which only about 5% of gamers have.. “oh this is not fun! i’ve walked for 3 minutes and no action! F*** this!!! I’m firing up CoD4 for som real sim action shenanigans!”

Gotta say another thing that i forgot.. OFP2 will probably offer greater playability than ARMA2. Just cause Codemasters have been shoving tons of cash into it. It’s probably going to be really polished and nice. It’s probably also going to be a bit more arcade-like than OFP/ARMA, but hey, if it offers some really deep tactical gameplay with solid multiplayer, i might go with OFP2 over ARMA2 even if the guns don’t feel authentic, or the choppers are a bit too easy to fly (which i think they are in ARMA and OFP as well..).